


I do the protecting

by Rysler



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Comfort, Episode Tag, F/F, I do the protecting, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Sidekicks, Superheroes, love interests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 13:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11990889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rysler/pseuds/Rysler
Summary: Spoilers for The Defenders and Jessica Jones S1. The night after.





	I do the protecting

The police station was eerily silent, or maybe Jessica couldn’t hear past the ringing in her ears. Pain had formed a lump in her throat and another in her skull. Harlem wasn’t that far from Midtown and she could feel every tremor of the building settling. Crushing the life out of Matthew. Hadn’t they promised no innocent lives would be lost? Or some shit?

Malcolm brought her a mug of hot liquid and she knew better than to reject it. She drank, not caring if it burned her. Half brandy, half police-issue coffee. 

It was terrible. She met Malcolm’s eyes and glared as she took another sip.

He wiped snot away from his nose. The clear kind, the kind that could pass for tears, but she knew. She wanted to call him a little bitch, but he didn’t like that, so she just drank. 

Karen and the other lawyer, Figgy, or Fuzzy, were silent beside her, granite monuments of anguish.

“Foggy,” Malcolm said. 

She nodded. Took another sip. The alcohol was helping. Maybe even the coffee, too. She felt less like throwing up or falling apart. Even though Trish was absently running fingers through her hair.

“Can we go?” Trish asked.

Malcolm looked around. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s going to stop us.”

“Okay. Come on.” Trish looped her arm under Jessica’s and hauled her to her feet.

“Wait. What if there’s news--”

“There’s no news, Jessica,” Trish said.

Ice through her heart. No coffee in the world to melt that sensation. Jessica finished her mug and sat it down on Misty’s desk. Then she let herself be escorted into a cab. 

She swiped at her nose. All wet.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “Not me, too.”

Malcolm and Trish were talking in low voices that she couldn’t distinguish. Her head was still ringing. She must have gotten clocked hard. Five or six times. 

Is this what sidekicks did? Nurse their wounded hero after the big fight? Claire had attached herself to Luke like a barnacle and Colleen and Danny were doing their weird thing.

There was the nausea again. Maybe something had pierced her spleen. Did that cause nausea? Seeing that detective without her arm certainly did. Her stomach roiled. Brandy was bad for it. Brandy was poison. She groaned.

Trish stroked her face. “You’re okay, Jess,” she said. 

Malcolm opened up a plastic bag and held it under her. 

Which one of them was the sidekick? Trish could fight better. But Malcolm answered the phones. Malcolm seemed more devoted to his role than Trish. She wanted to be her own hero. 

She wanted to be like Jessica.

“Goddamnit,” Jessica said, and flung them off of her, and buried her face in the bag. She sobbed.

They left her alone until the cab stopped, and then it was more walking, and the smell of Trish’s building, and the sound of nothing but air circulation. The chime of the elevator. 

“I hate elevators,” she said. Her hands shook. Damned DTs. 

Malcolm and Trish ignored her. Nothing they hadn’t seen before. Nothing they hadn’t cleaned up before. Jessica didn’t even feel guilty. Take that. 

Trish opened the door to her apartment and dragged Jessica through to the bathroom.

“Why are we in your apartment?” Jessica asked.

“Yours is kind of a pigsty,” Trish said.

“It’s mine.”

Trish leaned Jessica against the counter and then turned on the bathtub. “Malcolm,” she called, “Can you help me undress her?”

Jessica huffed. 

Trish tugged at her jacket. “You smell absolutely disgusting.”

“It’s been a few days,” Jessica said, letting her jacket slip to the floor. 

Malcolm lifted her shirt above her head and Trish attacked her jeans, and Jessica didn’t have the energy to protest. She was home, she was sad. 

She ached all over. 

Killing Kilgrave had been personal, even if they city thought she was doing them some kind of favor.  This kind of altruistic saving-the-city bullshit was too much. The stuff Trish always wanted her to do. 

It was too hard. It required teamwork and death and all the things she hated. 

It left her naked in front of two people in a bathroom larger than her apartment. In the middle of Manhattan. Childhood-exploitation royalties sure paid for a lot. She should make that joke. She opened her mouth.

“I’ll be right back,” Trish said. 

Jessica closed her mouth. Malcolm guided her into the tub. 

“Gonna light some candles?” Jessica asked, as she sat in the scalding water with her arms around her knees. Sulking. 

“I’m going to burn your clothes.”

“Do you know how hard it is to find the perfect pair of jeans?”

“Fine, I’ll just burn your underwear,” he said.

“That’s fair.”

He smiled, and left the bathroom door open as he left with her clothes. 

He was definitely the sidekick.

Trish came back with a bottle of Maker’s Mark and two lowball glasses filled with ice cubes. 

“I don’t need ice,” Jessica said.

“It’s so you’ll drink it slower.”

“We could just put it up my ass,” Jessica said.

“No thanks,” Trish said. 

Trish poured double bourbons squared for both of them, sat hers on the edge of the tub, and then dimmed the lights. She lit three fat candles and then sat on the toilet. 

“Extra flamey,” Jessica said.

“I was sure to get your least-favorite scents.”

Jessica lifted her glass. “To the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” she said.

“The hero we didn’t deserve,” said Trish.

They drank. 

The bourbon washed out the foul taste of coffee and brandy, and the bitter taste of steel and smoke and cinder. The scent of the sewer still clung to her hair. The sweat of days unwashed. Of years of neglect.

Trish topped Jessica’s glass off again and Jessica drank deep. Then she stuck out her hand in front of her. Steady. Her knuckles were bruised. She set the glass down and sighed.

Trish knelt by the tub. “I’m going to wash your hair, okay?”

“You’ll wash the city away from me.” 

“Just for tonight.”

Jessica closed her eyes and sank into the water. Only her nose remained above the line to breathe. Her hair floated around her. Trish began to massage her scalp. There was the scent of sandalwood and roses. Trish’s best stuff, which Jessica hated to smell on anyone but Trish. Pert Plus would have been fine by her. She kept her complaint to herself. Her hair became silk in Trish’s fingers.

She only squirmed a little when Trish washed behind her ears, then sighed as Trish drew her out of the water by cupping her neck and lifting. Trish was stronger than she remembered.

“You’re--” she started to say as her eyes fluttered open, but Trish’s mouth covered hers. 

Jessica reached out of the water for Trish’s shoulder, deepening the kiss, twisting until they sat up together. Trish turned her head, inhaling sharply. Then she sat back.

“Talk to me,” Trish said.

Jessica took another draught of whisky. “Are we at the talking stage now?”

Trish met her gaze. “Yes.”

Jessica felt that icy stab in her chest again. Trish wasn’t the sidekick. She was the love interest.

That was the worst.

“Ugh,” Jessica said. She finished her drink. “Fine.”

Trish put on her listening face. When Jessica didn’t talk right away, Trish took a small sip of her own drink, and then resumed listening. Trish had mastered the art of listening to crazy people. Starting with their mother. Turning it into a profession. There was no escaping it.

“Where’s Malcolm?” Jessica tried.

“He went home.”

“He gets to go to my shitty building, but not me?”

“Jess.”

Jessica sighed. She picked up Trish’s loofah, squirted body wash, or polish, or essence, onto it, and began scrubbing her armpit. To cover up her voice breaking when she said, “I can’t do it.”

There it was. Cracked like glass. She swallowed hard.

Trish didn’t react. “Do what?”

“Save the world. Be Captain America. It’s too hard. It costs too much.” She blinked away tears that obscured the candlelight vision of Trish in front of her.

“Jessica, you did do it.”

“It was too big. It made me feel so small.” Jessica looked at the ceiling as her lip quivered--not enough whisky in the world to stop that--and said, “Too many people. Too many people relied on me.” She curled herself into a ball again to cry, hiding her face from Trish. 

“You got it done,” Trish said.

Jessica shook her head, squeezing her eyes against the tears. Crying physically hurt, as much as taking a punch from Luke, as much as one of Elektra’s goons cracking her skull. She wanted to scream out the lumps in her, the ones that kept her from breathing. 

Trish said, “When I helped you with Killgrave, that was personal. I was helping you, you were dealing with him. You were saving Malcolm.”

“I didn’t save--”

“Shssh. Listen. It’s no different for a million other people in this city. It was just as personal for Danny, right? For Colleen and Claire? It’s not more than personal. Just… lots of it.”

Jessica exhaled forcefully. Then she lifted her head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Trish touched her shoulder. “Losing you to Killgrave is no different than losing you because New York City got destroyed in the Incident. It’s pretty much the same.”

Jessica bit her lip. She wanted more Maker’s but the bottle was too far. She took Trish’s wrist, drew the hand away from her shoulder. Examined the palm. Kissed the skin. Gathered herself.

“Look,” Jessica said, “I don’t want you to wear Karen’s face. Not ever.”

Trish smiled. “I know.”

“Can I have another drink?”

Trish handed over her half-drunk glass. “There. Take a proper shower. Then come to bed. You can have another there.” She got to her feet.

“Fine.”

Jessica watched Trish leave the bathroom. It was a special night. Trish hated her drinking in bed. Jessica got to her feet, fighting against a fresh wave of pain. It was a special night because of Matt. Some stranger she’d barely met died to save her. That was the kind of stuff she couldn’t handle. She couldn’t even answer her phone.

***

Jessica came into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, her hair blown dry and tied up in a mauve scrunchy. 

“I’ll admit,” Jessica said, “You do have better water pressure.”

“That’s because my shower has water pressure at all,” Trish said.

“Touche.” Jessica accepted a freshly-poured drink. She took in the sight of Trish under the covers, only the side lamp on. “Are you naked under there?”

“Completely.”

“You didn’t think I’d be tired? From all my hard work saving the world?”

“The city, and nope.”

“Huh.” Jessica took a long, fortifying sip. It warmed her through. 

She smelled like Trish now, not like New York. She could see the skyscrapers through Trish’s picture windows, but she couldn’t hear anything, not even traffic. Trish’s apartment was a bunker, thanks to Killgrave, and that had its advantages. 

Jessica tossed the towel on a chair and sat on the bed, just so she could say she’d had a drink there, and then set the empty glass on the bedside table. 

“I’m sorry you had to wait all night,” Jessica said. “That must have sucked.”

“You have no idea,” Trish said.

“Well, you waited long enough. I’m here now.” 

Trish smiled. Her eyes glistened with tears, but they didn’t fall. She knew the score. Love interests had to be strong. Jessica slid over to her, under the sheets, and scooped Trish into her arms. “I love you,” she said.

So she’d been trained to say it, so what. It still felt nice. She offered Trish an impish grin.

“Forever,” Trish said, tracing Jessica’s heart with her fingertip.

“What?” 

“Well, it won’t really be forever. Until one of us dies saving the world or each other.”

“Oh, okay, until next week, then,” Jessica said.

“Exactly.”

“There’s no need for some big romantic gesture that matches bringing down a whole building,” Jessica said. 

“It’s not that.” Trish drummed her fingers on Jessica’s chest. “It’s… I told Karen.”

“About us?”

“Yeah.”

“What did she say?”

“Blah blah Matt’s in trouble whatever,” Trish said. “That’s when we heard the building was being evacuated.”

“Well, it’s still nice. We’re all big one happy family.”

“We are?” Trish asked.

“Yeah. That’s Danny’s… whole thing. We’re all linked. All for one and one for all.  _ The Rats of NIMH _ , or something.”

Trish slid her fingers up Jessica’s neck, caressed her cheek, and then tugged her ear. “I’ve never been a part of a happy family before.”

“I was,” Jessica said.

“And?” 

“I mean, yeah, it’s pretty nice.” 

Trish nodded.

Jessica closed her eyes and kissed the tip of Trish’s nose. She tried using all of her senses, like Matt. Smell and taste and touch. She stroked Trish’s arm, then joined hands with her. Lowered her lips to Trish’s. She felt strong again. Trish needed her to be strong. She’d been protecting Trish most of her life. She even liked it. 

There was one more thing she wanted to say, something that Matt’s story about Elektra had sparked in her, the memory of death and life reborn. 

She drew away from Trish’s kiss and whispered, “I didn’t really start living until I met you.” She hoped Trish knew what she meant, was relieved at Trish’s smile.

“Same here,” Trish said. 

They kissed, squeezing hands. Jessica rotated, shifting on top of Trish, so that her touches could follow their familiar trails--

“No,” Trish murmured. Trish turned, until Jessica was underneath her, using strength that still surprised Jessica.

Jessica peered up at Trish’s dark eyes in the dim room, trying not to go all frightened rabbit at being pinned to a bed. 

Trish said, “I’m not sure you learned the most important lesson of your little field trip with Luke and the others.”

Jessica raised her eyebrows. 

“I’m going to show you.”

“Okay.” The trapped feeling was giving way to the warm sensation of Trish’s hips pressing hers, Trish’s breasts swaying as Trish talked--Oh, Trish was talking about something or other, Jessica should try to pay attention.

She squinted as Trish said, “You’re not alone anymore. Other heroes have your back. You don’t get to be the lone wolf in the night. You have a pack.”

“Please stop watching  _ Game of Thrones_. For me.” 

_ And best not tell Trish about the dragon bones underneath Midland Circle. _

“We do the protecting,” Trish said.

Jessica scowled. But the corner of her mouth smiled.

Trish kissed her. 

Jessica wrapped her arms and legs around Trish and let the weight of her become comfortable. Like a shield. Trish kissed her throat and Jessica twisted to expose more of it. Trish cupped her breast and Jessica blotted out all of the men who had been there before. She was surrounded by Trish’s scent and Trish’s Egyptian cotton sheets and Trish’s six-inch-thick steel doors.

Trish nuzzled her stomach.

“Fuck me,” Jessica whispered.

“Mm?”

Jessica buried her hands in Trish’s hair and pulled. “Fuck me!”

Trish appeared above her in an instant, braced on one bicep, the other hand still on Jessica’s hip.

“You can have your fun later,” Jessica growled. “Right now I need to be fucked.”

Trish laughed, and then petted Jessica’s belly, stroking lower, until she was between Jessica’s legs. Still on the surface.

“Jesus Christ, Trish.”

Trish entered her with two fingers, straight and long, and then after a few pumps, added a third. It burned as much as the whisky, was just as wet and intoxicating, and Jessica closed her eyes, letting Trish control everything, letting Trish take her away from New York and their lives to wherever Trish wanted them to be. 

Heroland, or whatever. 

“That feels so good, Trish,” Jessica said, lifting her hips.

“I can make it feel even better.”

Then Trish’s lips were caressing hers, and behind them a whisky-soaked tongue, painting Jessica’s. Jessica grabbed Trish’s hair again and held on. She bit at Trish’s lips. Chased her tongue and captured it and chased it again. 

Trish was inside her, where nothing else could get in. Trish’s thumb was--Jessica bucked against it, and clung to Trish, screaming as she came. Screaming the way she hadn’t been able to in the bathtub, a roar of negative energy fleeing her body, leaving her only herself in Trish’s embrace. Soft, but whole.

“What was that?” Trish asked, when Jessica opened her eyes.

“I think I found my chi,” Jessica said.

“Fucking finally.” Trish grinned.

Jessica flipped Trish over, kicking the covers away from them, and placed a kiss over Trish’s heart. “Now I’m going to find yours.”

***

Jessica sipped her damn chamomile tea and looked over the phone messages Malcolm had neatly typed up for her. Her chair hurt her back, and made her feel like she was home. 

“All these people with their problems,” she groused. “They should just be grateful to be alive.”

Malcolm chuckled. “I know I am. But some people need help.” He was hovering beside her. She should get him a shitty chair, too. 

“And we’re the ones to help them? Us?” She gave him a disbelieving look.

He shrugged. “We’re the ones who can.”

“We’re not alone,” she said.

“I knew that.”

“Oh, you did? When did you figure that out?” she asked.

“When I met you,” he said.

“Fuck.”

“We’re not in Heroland, or whatever you called it on my voicemail last night, which, by the way, was too much oversharing.”

She waved him off and took another sip of tea.

“Anyway. We’re in New York.”

“Matt told us to protect his city.”

Malcolm nodded.

“Fuck,” she said again.

“Bad language helps no one.”

She gave him the finger, and drank his soothing tea, and took his list of potential clients. Strangers, all of them. Just like Matt had been.

“Can you believe that fucker was blind?”

“It defies belief,” Malcolm said.

“Seriously. So what’s our excuse? Let’s get to work.”

END


End file.
